The FRA responded to a Petition for Rulemaking submitted by the ASLRRA and the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association, Inc. by agreeing to delay the implementation of its Part 243 Regulations for Training, Qualification and Oversight for Safety-Related Employees for all contractors, and those Class II and III railroads that are not intercity or commuter passenger railroads with 400,000 total employee work hours annually or more. The implementation date for contractors and qualifying Class II and Class III railroads to submit a training program for safety related employees is now May 1, 2021. Also, the designation of employee date will be delayed from September 1, 2020, to January 1, 2022 and the deadline for the first refresher training cycle will be delayed from December 31, 2024, to December 31, 2025.

The FRA also announced it is considering whether to initiate a separate rulemaking which would be limited to amending FRA’s training regulation so that the regulatory text includes the latest guidance that is intended to help small entities and other users of model training programs.